Part One of this article explored common frustrations marketing and sales teams have with each other and how those tensions show up day-to-day.
In Part Two, we move beyond the symptoms and into the underlying causes: the structural, operational and cultural factors that create misalignment between marketing and sales within B2B organisations, and outline the steps leaders can take to build a more unified, higher‑performing commercial engine.
Root causes of marketing and sales misalignment
Root cause 1: Strategy and structure is pulling teams in different directions
The first cause is structural. Marketing and sales are frequently measured, rewarded and organised in ways that make collaboration difficult. Sales typically operates against near‑term revenue targets and the hard measurement and pressure of quarterly quotas, while marketing may be judged against a longer-term horizon, and often with softer measures of success (particularly if objectives are tied to seemingly-less-tangible brand objectives).
Different success metrics can lead to different priorities and behaviours, particularly if incentives and comp schemes are set up to reward individual team performance rather than overall shared revenue outcomes. Reporting lines and organisational design might also be keeping teams siloed, rather than united under a single commercial narrative, especially within larger and more matrixed organisations. Even in organisations with strong intent for collaboration, these structural forces can push teams apart, and it can become a challenge for teams to move in the same direction, no matter how well they get on personally.
TLDR: The way your organisation is set up might be pushing marketing and sales apart.
Root cause 2: Foundations aren’t aligned or aren’t trusted
Many organisations struggle not because of major philosophical differences in the way they should be going to market, but because basic commercial foundations are absent, inconsistent or weak. Ideal customer profiles, segmentation and targeting criteria, and positioning and messaging frameworks might be outdated, or be being interpreted differently across teams.
CRM adoption can also vary widely, meaning data can feel unreliable or incomplete. Lead definitions, qualification criteria and handover rules and processes also tend to drift over time, unless they’re being enforced in a consistent way, and continuously reviewed.
When the foundations don’t give both teams a consistent, shared starting point, alignment can be fragile. And without trusted data, clear processes and a consistent view of the customer, teams end up making their own interpretations – and that’s can cause friction.
TLDR: The basics that should unite marketing and sales are either absent, weak, fuzzy or not trusted.
Root cause 3: Understanding of the buyer journey is fragmented across the organisation
Marketing and sales often focus on different phases of the buying journey. Without conscious effort to join those perspectives together, the organisation ends up with a fragmented view of the customer. Sales lives in the late‑stage world of qualified opportunities, pipeline, objections, urgency, negotiation. Marketing’s remit and ability to operate full funnel may differ across organisations, but at the very least it should be seeing the early‑stage, pre-pipeline world of research, digital signals, problem exploration.
Both perspectives are required. But when sales and marketing aren’t united in their definitions of the overall buyer journey, and of GTM plays and next-best-actions, and of the behavioural and information thresholds that must be reached for a buyer to progress, collaboration is challenging. As buying groups grow larger and more complex, and as the buyer journey changes, this disconnect will become even more damaging.
TLDR: Teams are operating against different and incomplete versions of the buyer journey.
Root cause 4: Collaboration rhythms are weak or inconsistent
Even well‑intentioned teams struggle when they lack shared rhythms to align their work. Marketing and sales rarely plan together: marketing campaigns are often planned without sales input, while sales sprints and outreach may run independently of marketing activity. This can unsurprisingly lead to mismatched expectations on timing and outcomes.
Lead follow‑up SLAs, qualification rules and handoff processes are also often unwritten, unclear or inconsistently applied, while feedback loops might be vague or entirely absent. Without regular, structured points of connection, alignment becomes a matter of chance rather than design: teams drift apart simply because nothing is pulling them together.
TLDR: Without shared rhythms, teams drift apart by default.
Root cause 5: Culture and behaviours reinforce division
Finally, culture often plays a bigger role than most leaders expect. Small behaviours – like allowing long-standing stereotypes such as marketing being the “colouring in department,” or casual comments about sales’ “laziness”, or accepting alternate definitions for key terms – can widen the gap between teams.
The pace, pressure and day-to-day reality of each team often isn’t well understood by the other, restricting any empathy or understanding. Wins aren’t always shared across functions, so collaboration feels optional rather than essential. I’ve also seen leaders unintentionally widen the gap by solving process or execution-related problems in functional silos.
Culture fills the space that process leaves behind: and if that culture reinforces division rather than unity, misalignment will become the norm.
TLDR: Culture does more to separate the teams than any process ever will.
How to fix the root causes of misalignment
Fixing root cause 1: Align strategy, incentives and ownership around shared outcomes
Misalignment is inevitable when marketing and sales are rewarded for different things. The first step to fixing it is aligning KPIs so both teams win only when the business wins. That means shifting focus away from isolated functional metrics and toward shared measures: revenue, pipeline health and sufficiency, and deal progression metrics should matter to everyone, even if each function contributes in different ways.
This alignment needs to extend into planning: joint commercial plans, rather than entirely-separate marketing and sales plans, can force earlier collaboration, choices and clearer trade‑offs. Above all, leaders must consistently reinforce a “one go‑to‑market team” mindset, rather than framing challenges as marketing problems or sales problems.
TLDR: Teams align faster when they win and lose together.
Fix 2: Rebuild the foundations and make them non‑negotiable
Strong alignment depends on strong strategic foundations. That often starts with refreshing ICP, segmentation and targeting criteria together: and, crucially, using real customer, deal and market data, rather than assumptions, anecdotes or legacy definitions.
Marketing teams should be skilled enough to drive this process. But when both marketing and sales are actively involved in target market selection – in defining who matters most, and who doesn’t, who we’re going after and who we’re not – alignment improvements and effectiveness increases. This sounds super obvious, but in practice it’s rare: LinkedIn Institute research in 2023 suggested that marketing and sales teams overlap just 16% of the time! But when they do overlap, unsurprisingly, performance improves across every B2B category.
Process and data discipline are just as important. Clear, simple SLAs for lead and opportunity scoring, and qualification and handover processes remove guesswork and reduce tension at the point of transfer. CRM adoption must also be treated as a commercial expectation within both teams, supported by role‑based training, regular auditing, clear performance standards and reinforced by leadership. This one never just happens on its own, and in my in my experience often needs more sticks than carrots.
Finally, organisations need a single source of truth for messaging, value props, pitch decks and case studies, so teams are working from the same playbook. The playbook should be easy to find and access from shared drives, regularly updated with version controls, and constantly referred back to… otherwise, teams will always revert to locally-saved versions.
TLDR: Alignment breaks down when the foundational basics aren’t clear, consistent or trusted.
Fix 3: Create a shared understanding of the buyer journey, and of deals as they progress
Marketing and sales bring different but complementary perspectives on the buyer, and alignment improves dramatically when those perspectives are deliberately joined up. Antonia Wade’s excellent book on the B2B buying journey does far more justice to this than I ever could – but in essence that means working together to define a journey model for your organisation, centred around the buyers’ objectives and information needs, and being purposeful about sales and marketing’s role at each stage.
Time here is usually well spent. It can often be hard to justify carving out time for this sort of work, or to think you need to wait for next annual planning cycle. But this is vital activity for effective sales and marketing execution. And in my experience, the process of collaborating on these things can be as important as the outputs: it helps develop a shared language, a shared appreciation of roles and responsibilities, and a general raising of commercial awareness across both teams.
The creation or refresh of buyer personas is also a good opportunity for collaboration. Again, marketing teams need to be skilled enough to be leading this process, but should be ensuring it’s a process that incorporates both qualitative (sales calls) and quantitative (CRM, research) insights.
Of course, this depends on marketing teams gathering these types of insights in the first place! In many B2B organizations, marketing is neither equipped nor mandated to be conducting the research required to build a robust, evidence-based understanding of buyers and markets. This is a common issue but, frankly, a cardinal sin for marketing teams. Ritson’s first rule of marketing is ‘market orientation’: the humbling, 180º turn that marketers must make in order to view things from the customers’ lens. Marketing needs to be resourceful in finding ways to own market orientation, and in finding ways to gather the types of insights required to engender it… even if they’ve never been explicitly asked to do so by sales.
TLDR: Alignment improves when both teams act on the same version of the buyer, and when marketing brings in insights.
Fix 4: Build consistent operating rhythms that force collaboration
Once journey maps and personas have been created and established, they should be brought to life, reinforced and constantly evolving as teams go about their day-to-day operations. Regular win‑loss reviews help surface what actually influenced decisions and should be shared with both teams. Marketing also benefits from being closer to late‑stage deal reviews, while sales should be involved earlier in content and campaign development. Alongside this, organisations need a simple, repeatable way to capture objections, as well as triggers and buying signals from live conversations. When buyer understanding evolves continuously, rather than sitting in static documents, both teams operate with far greater confidence, and commercial awareness.
Good intentions aren’t enough to sustain alignment. It needs structure. Clear SLAs around lead response times, definitions and follow‑up remove ambiguity and reduce friction. Introducing a monthly commercial planning meeting that both teams must attend creates space to align priorities and expectations, and can keep marketing accountable, while weekly pipeline‑plus‑campaign check‑ins can help synchronise what’s happening right now.
Structured feedback loops and post-mortems also matter. Post‑campaign reviews with sales input, and loss reviews with marketing involvement, turn feedback into learning. Over time, these rhythms make collaboration habitual instead of optional.
TLDR: Alignment sticks when it’s built into how teams work, not left to chance.
Fix 5: Actively shape culture and model the right behaviours
Finally, culture can quietly undermine even the best processes, so it must be addressed deliberately. Publicly celebrating joint wins reinforces the idea that success is shared. Ring the bell together!
Leaders also need to challenge stereotypes and call out siloed thinking when they see it. Investing in relationship‑building moments – shared training, customer roundtables, deal reviews or even informal sessions – helps break down barriers and humanise both sides.
TLDR: Culture determines whether alignment lasts or fades.